album review

A review of the debut album from experimental hip-hop duo Shabazz Palaces

There’s no other hip-hop album that sounds even remotely close to Shabazz Palaces’ debut Black Up. This is an album that any kind of music listener will be puzzled by. Black Up doesn’t take one form, it takes many. Constantly throwing curveballs and never staying on one path, its glitchy and minimal production is meant to be something that isn’t easy to digest. The amazing part about Black Up is how each track manages to sound nothing like the last yet retain a satisfying sense of cohesiveness as if each track is glued to the next and they’re meant to be experienced together. It’s an album that is greater than the sum of its parts. You never really know what’s going on until you’ve familiarized yourself enough with Black Up. Shabazz Palaces emphasize atmosphere with airy and abstract production. You don’t listen to “Free Press and Curl” for the first time, you experience it. One of the strongest tracks on the LP, it features a smooth and effect-laden vocal delivery from Ishmael Butler, dancing from line to line as the song greets you with elements of Black Up that are implemented commonly throughout the album- a disjointed structure, repeated lines (“I’m free”), and most of all, the sense that the duo just had fun making this thing. “An Echo from the Hosts..” serves a smoothly-flowingly, lyrically dense performance from Butler, as the song excels in atmosphere and mood. This song and the one that follows it are such disorienting tracks that it sometimes feels as if Black Up also could function as an electronic project as well. “Are You.. Can You… Were You?..” has a more minimal sound to it but still manages to entrance you in this disjointed groove that flows along with the confidence and fluidity of Butler’s rapping ability. Although “A Treatease Dedicated..” adds to the free-form nature of Black Up, I felt it was a weaker track(arguably the weakest on Black Up) compared to the last three albeit a good one. “Youlogy” redeems this drop in quality, producing these abrasive, psychedelic sonic assaults filled with effects. A production and lyrical highlight, “Youlogy” is without a doubt one of the strongest tracks on the album and is the most amorphic, which complements its hypnotic sound greatly. I would call “Endeavors for Never..” an efficient anomaly on the album, but each song is so different from the next it would be unfitting. The song features no rapping of any kind and serves as an atmosphere builder with a good vocal and lyrical performance from Catherine Harris-White, followed by an echoing chant from Butler (“Forever and never”). “Recollections of the Wraith” is another track that is minimally produced yet fills the room with a soulful and melodic vocal sample and another track that is a lyrical highlight of Butler’s. There are psychedelic and tribal elements to “The King’s New Clothes..” that make the song so enthralling and disorienting; it serves as a reason why Shabazz Palaces are such an interesting hip-hop group. Distorted vocals and banging percussion create this driving force behind the bass-heavy “Yeah You”, informing you that this group isn’t out of lyrical successes yet. It’s amazing to me how this album manages to find new sounds efficiently on every track, especially with the last track “Swerve… The Reeping of..”, another amorphous track that ends its glitchy percussion and melodic vocal samples with the chants of “Black is you, black is me, black is us, black is free”. Another lyrically dense achievement from Butler: “The moonlight and diamond cloud glistenin’ glazed, that we giftin? Every sound, we trying to mash and attention / We run the latest theorems, they just re-rap through the givens / They like talk first, we are observe and listen.” Black Up ignores standard rap conventions and finds a sound of its own, which happens to be many sounds. The trippy and complex nature of each song gives Shabazz Palaces such an interesting way of presenting their music. This is experimental hip-hop in top form, and something I recommend anyone with an open mind listen to.

9.3/10

Favorite Tracks: Free Press and Curl, An Echo from the.. , Youlogy, Recollections of the Wraith

©Sub Pop / 2011